POSTCARD#495: Bangkok: I remember on my seventieth birthday thinking there was ten good years left, now I’m seventy-five, there’s only five good years left… ‘Time is just slippin’ away.’ as Bob Dylan says.Even now, it all seems to be coming to an end… ‘sorry, can’t stay, got to go now!’ No space for unfinished undertakings. Return to Go. At the edge of my vision, household objects look at me as I pass… poised in their choreography of dance steps, there’s a feeling in the air; the next house move is coming up soon… shipping company coming to wrap them up in packaging paper and tuck them into cartons again? No, no, the time is not here yet… household objects remain as they were. The stillness of things, no-self (anattā)interests me more and more these days. Anattā refers to the Teaching that no permanent self can be found anywhere. For a long time, I thought it was a denial of the existence of a self, but it is a strategy of mind-training to attain non-attachment by recognizing everything as impermanent (aniccā), while staying silent on the ultimate existence of an unchanging essence.

For Christians, the realization of no Self can bring with it a profound sense of ‘lack’ [The nature of Lack, David R, Loy]. The thought that there is no soul facilitates the entry of God to fill the emptiness; a significant turning point for all Christians. Buddhists face this ‘lack’ in the same way, but they don’t fill it with their sense of God, they just stay with the emptiness. It can trigger a revelation that the emptiness (śūnyatā), no-self (anattā), is everywhere and in all things.

I came from a Western-style Christian God community but that didn’t work for me. I noticed it didn’t work for most people in the low-income/poverty section of society in the West. The devastating emptiness of it all is there with or without a Self. The population is driven to get and do and attain and protect and defend. Self is political, ordinary people are subject to fear and anxiety over the flimsy nature of their existence, so they structure their lives around employment and can’t escape from that unless they step out of the earning momentum, and risk losing everything. They don’t see they are maintained in an unknowingness of the world like penned animals are by the farmer, well intentioned though he/she may be, in order to cultivate a special kind of hunger, upādāna taṇhā (clinging and craving) – the greater the craving, the more consumers will purchase products to satisfy their hunger (a forever kind of hunger-dependency). The Western style of God together with governments and the corporations are simply involved in farming the population.

The outer world just rolls and tumbles along, in all its diversity, and totally neutral. Whether there’s belief it’s this or that, makes no difference; it’s just how it is. I found that resisting the emptiness was hard to bear so, I took on board the ‘lack’ and deep knowing there’s nothing there, and found refuge in Buddhism in the East. That was more than thirty years ago and I’m still here. The emptiness is no-self helps me contemplate the constructed nature of mind, and it becomes possible to see the whole picture; how everything works and where we go from here. It’s an investigative approach that leads to an understanding of the non-duality of the observed world and the observer of it, together as a oneness.

So, where to, now? Go look for a place in the North? The same as all the other moves, I can picture it now; going to look at homes with the agent. Walking up the path, open the door… ghosts of previous inhabitants rush away to their hiding places in a whisper of movement. For me there’s only the dust of empty rooms, a faint smell of cooking in the kitchen, and a disappearance of the past – looking for somewhere to sit in a room with no furniture. Leaning thus, in a doorframe, thinking maybe this will do – maybe here I can spend the rest of my days. Awareness takes it all in, puts it away in a new folder. A new reference point: is ‘this’ where the heart is? Home is where I hang my hat.

‘Both Jesus and the Buddha were pointing to something that could not be found in the context of ordinary ‘mind’, the Buddha’s goal was to strive to realise the unconditioned, the unoriginated, the deathless, that which is free from mortality. So, did the Buddha find God? Was it this that he called Nibbana? God is not Nibbana, because when we speak about ‘God’ we start getting ideas in our head about what God is and that is very far from the unborn, the unconditioned, the uncreated, the unoriginated, the deathless. All these words tell you nothing. What comes into your mind? Nothing. Anything you might say or try to put into words to describe God is an image in the mind. There are no words for it.’ [John Cianciosi]

‘God is God only in relation to man. God appears in the material world like the reflection of the moon in a pool of water, as part of the illusion that is the context of man searching for God with his mind. What man sees becomes “God” (gender neutral; “He” only for explanatory purposes). He is Omniscient, Omnipresent, Creator of the world. He is both immanent and transcendent, full of love and justice. He may be even regarded to have a personality. He is the subject of worship.’ [Wikipedia Brahman page]

POSTCARD#494: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok:  Lining up at the Gate with passport and boarding pass…  down the walkway and into the aircraft. I find my seat, bag up there in luggage compartment and squeeze into the allotted space below, chair moulded to fit the human body. Fasten seat belt, aircraft take off… huge upthrust of massive engine power. The sun’s rays enter cabin windows on the other side, sweep around the interior in the steep ascent of the aircraft and the course setting for North West. There is the sky, clouds, and way down there… the surface of the planet. I am a microscopic cell in a universe of universes, so vast I cannot comprehend the totality of it and so I live in a world of what-it-looks-like, believing this to be reality.

A child is crying, front-left. I’m in the aisle seat, the sound piercing through insulation of the meds I take for the headache. Silent inhale, then “SCREAM!” It’s like a medical probe penetrating deep into internal organs. I try tilting my head in small increments to alter the directional frequency of received sound but it’s not working – I am in its state of inconsolable distress, bathed in the totality of its sound. I try telling myself it’ll stop eventually, hold on for a bit longer, and just as I’m about to get up and run away from the source of the awful sound, it stops… gets quieter, bit by bit. and silent.

Sensory impingement triggers the headache, sound or light mainly; frozen-ice drinks or pungent odors can do it. Such a lot depends on the medicine I take, how many and how often. Sometimes there is complete calm and the meds allow me to see the intrusive pain growing inside me like a tree, branches and twiglets with buds opening; it’s there but I can’t feel it – this is the gravity-free world of pharmaceutical weightlessness; the magic capsules that make it all go away for a while. Then the intrusive pain is growing inside me again and I’m swallowing more capsules all to no avail… and thus, “the entanglement,” I have to extend out of the body/mind quickly and into “what’s going on around me?” Chat with a neighbour maybe… but masked passengers spaced out in the aircraft, an empty seat between each person; the familiarity of Covid Estrangement… the truth of separation helps the mind to ease away from the pain, and the urgency of it settles.

 Jiab and M fall asleep, and I’m left looking out through the windows on all sides, at the clouds in the sky. The illusion of the plane being motionless while travelling at 600 mph. I’ve seen it like this, sometimes, in the car going to the airport; a plane is taking off and if you’re coming towards the ascending aircraft, it looks like the plane is just hanging in the air (due to the difference between air speed and ground speed). It’s this same feeling now, only I’m in it, a strange illusion; same cloud shapes outside for an hour or so; no indication we have moved. The impression is that everything has stopped… I feel like I should hold my breath.

Everything is so quiet and still, clouds seem to enter into the interior. A masked stewardess appears through the wispiness and mists of high-altitude spaces, conspicuous eye makeup above the face mask, gestures with her head; do I need anything from the drinks cart? Thanks, no, I’m really quite spaced-out, as it is, and she pushes the drinks cart down the aisle, glasses and little bottles clinking and tinkling together, a strangely familiar chord or tune I used to sing to.

Fasten seat belts, the aircraft is descending. Exit the plane and out into the high-ceilinged airport halls. Pick up the bags and head for the Airport Taxi desk. Arriving is the departure point for the next journey, and another opens up after that. I live in an illusion, riding around like a passenger in the vehicle of my body, input from data received through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch – and a mind that creates meaning based on memory files of similar events, other thoughts, problems/solutions, reviewing/seeking, and memories of past times.

“There is no ‘thing’ there. There is no real substance, no solidity, and no self-existent reality. All there is, is the quality of experience itself. No more, no less. There is just seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, cognizing. And the mind naming it all is also just another experience.” [Ajahn Amaro]

POSTCARD # 493: Bangkok: I’ve written often enough about the headache that has been with me since 2015. Here I’m writing about joyfulness and bliss… maybe ‘blessedness’ is a better word than bliss. About ‘blessedness,’ it’s worth saying here that Theravadin Buddhism is Apophatic, and when I feel blessed during the Buddhist chanting, it’s hearing the sound of the voices of the monks reaching back 2,500 years into the past, coming alive again, rather than witnessing a devotional image. I remember Ajahn Vajiro, a few years back, passing through town and we met him at the house where he was staying for a few days. I told him about my 24/7 headache, and the medicine I take for it, which interferes with my understanding of meditational mind states, and what could I do to improve the situation. He said to get back to the one who knows. In Thai it’s poo roo (poo: person, roo(v): to know. At the time, I wasn’t able to discuss this further because Ajahn began chanting the blessings of the Four Brahma-Viharas (the Four Immeasurables), while explaining the quality and meaning of the words.
1) Metta, Loving kindness.
2) Karuna, Compassion
3) Mudita, Empathetic joy, what goodwill feels when it encounters happiness.
4) Upekkha, Equanimity, inner composure, balance.
The acoustics of Ajahn Vajiro’s chanting remain in present time, and everything about who I am disappears for an instant leaving only a state of awareness. When this is so, I experience an indescribable awareness in the centre of the chest. In Pali it’s citta, the heart. I notice a loving, joyful, sensation in that central place that grows in intensity as I become aware of it.

I can focus on each of the immeasurables and understand how that individual characteristic quality or attribute works for myself and for other people, I can also understand how Upekkha may be a foundation shared with all of the immeasurables. But I wish I could develop the understanding and awareness of the immeasurables’ relationship with each other, and have the ability to notice the subtle difference between them. For example, Karuna and Metta: “Karuna is the desire to remove harm and suffering from others; while mettā is the desire to bring about the well-being and happiness of others.”

Leaving the 4 Brahma Viharas aside, for now, there is another mind state that could be said to have this quality of ‘blessedness,’ and that is bhavaṅga. Theravada Buddhism identifies it as “luminous mind.” Bhavaṅga is a passive mode of intentional consciousness; the state of the mind at rest when no active consciousness process is occurring. Although I’d read about bhavaṅga a long time ago, I simply stumbled upon the way to do it in these circumstances of head-ache; noticing every single aspect of how the body reacts, responds, and the mind reveals there’s a slightly deeper awareness in here, dormant until I notice it. Then it’s activated… and the state of bhavaṅga arises momentarily between each item of consciousness. I notice when it appears, it is what seems to be happening when nothing is going on… I have to allow it to come into the present time. There are no words for it,

Seated in a comfortable chair, arms on each arm rest, and feet flat on the floor, and bhavaṅga occurs when the cognitive process is focused on nothing at all. Sometimes it’s emptiness (śūnyatā), and this is the preferred state; agreeable enough to observe any discomfort, therefore allowing time to pass in a gentle meditational, introspective state… contemplating the empty space. The bhavaṅga practice can alter perception, which enables me to endure the headache discomfort better than before.

Sometimes this embodied identity I call ‘me’ is just not helpful at all… no, no, thank you. So, I can draw confidence from the reserve of underlying calm, that goes with bhavaṅga, and look for/find an empty space before it is occupied by ‘Self,’ and wait there for a moment until bhavaṅga is fully in place. Allowing the muscles at the back of the head to relax, mind can rest and all that remains is this floating feeling in the head, which is quite wonderful for me, considering the times I’ve suffered pain in that same location – and it’s this that motivates me to develop the bhavaṅga practice that seems to allow me a very different headspace which can accommodate the times of head-ache.

“There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.”
Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328

*Note: Bhavaṅga-citta is also a mental process which conditions the next mental process at the moment of death and rebirth: patisandhi. To find out more, I recommend you copy and paste – https://www.budsas.org/ebud/nina-abhidhamma/nina-abhi-12.htm -into your browser.

*About the image: it is a photo taken of the bougainvillea plant on our balcony, caught in a sunbeam.

POSTCARD # 492: Bangkok: Some years ago, before the Headache¹ arrived, I wrote a post, titled: ‘The in-between thing,’ dated: August 12, 2012. I had just started to meditate and became aware that the focus of attention can be in two places at the same time, located in this in-between space. I can be focused on one item of thought and at the same time there is sufficient focus on another item of thought to be able to see it’s possible to be focused on both at the same time. It moves and changes and at times there’s a bit more focus on one than the other but I am able to see it’s an awareness of one item of thought that includes awareness of another (note: and a third place of awareness that knows the other two places).

Although you could call this is the neutral state of mind, the Headache has now been with me since 2015, and I feel the ‘in between space’, is a specific place where I can go to find refuge from the pain, rather than a neutral state of mind, which doesn’t seem to be anything. Particularly when there is a sudden stab of head pain, ringing in urgency like an alarm bell that triggers an automatic reaction from Self to get out of there immediately! Nowadays, when that alarm bell rings, there’s an immediate leap away from the pain and into the refuge of the in-between space.

There’s an awareness of the painful area (around the right side of the head), and there’s another awareness that knows this – awareness of awareness. It means I can stay with the headache and just step back from the proximity to the pain because I realize I’m seeing it from somewhere else. In the Buddhist sense I’m drawing attention to an awareness of Suffering and the cause of suffering, but not just labeling it; ‘the cause’ of Suffering is ‘desire,’ the 2nd Noble Truth, no, I’m asking, what is this cause? It’s not ‘What is the cause of Suffering,’ it’s what is the cause of the cause?

I discovered that wanting-it-not-to-be-there is causing more of a problem than anything else. It pulls me into a confrontation with the pain (vibhava tanha²: the desire for it not to exist), and I can get caught up in this awkward attachment to the pain, and I have to get away from that mind state in addition to getting away from everything else! Instead of all that, find the space between thoughts, and the emergency mode is switched off. I can ease back from it, thinking, if there’s this awareness of the pain, there’s another awareness that knows it’s there – what is this ‘other’ awareness?

I can be engaged in some kind of difficult attachment and at the same time be aware that it is happening. There is another location from which I can be focused and the thinking process surrounding that pain scenario can be observed from that other location. If it’s seen, the attachment to Self is less intense (or not intense at all) and without anything to which it can adhere, gradually it’s not there anymore.

I learned how to do this by trial and error, and now it’s possible to contemplate the state of the body and to contemplate the mind contemplating this. I’m seeing it from somewhere else. The reaction to the pain caused me to stumble upon this space that’s in-between. I just didn’t know how to get to it before.

¹headache caused by Post-Herpetic Neuralgia

² three kinds of desire: 1. kama tanha (the desire to have) 2. bhava tanha (the desire to become) and 3. vibhava tanha (the desire to get rid of)

Image by Loris Lambert: Ibiraçu, state of espírito santo, Brazil

Han Shan’s “Looking at the Mind”

Look at what your body is – it is not you
But an image in the mirror of awareness,
Just like the reflection of the moon on the water.

Look at what your mind is – it is not
The thoughts and feelings that appear within it
But the bright knowing space that holds them.

When not a single thought arises, your mind is
Open, perceptive, serene and luminous;
It is complete as great all-embracing space
And holds all kinds of wondrous aspects.

Your mind does not come or go away,
Has no particular shape, nor a special way of being.
But a great many beneficial qualities
Come all forth from this one knowing being.

It does not depend on material existence,
Material existence covers it up!
Do (therefore) not take vain hopes seriously,
Vain hopes lead to illusory phenomena.

Closely investigate this mind, which is
A knowing emptiness, not containing a thing.
When you are suddenly flooded with emotions
Your vision gets unclear, your experience confused.

Then at once bring back your presence of mind
And gather all your strengths to reflect.
The clouds will disperse and the sky will clear:
The sun of awareness spreads brightly its light.

If no feelings or thoughts arise within
No (worrying) circumstance is found without.
So where lies the original reality,
Of all that has characteristics?

If you can be aware of a thought as it arises
This awareness dissolves the thought at once.
Sweep away whatever state of mind may come,
Be present and aware – and you will be free.

Good and evil, internal or external,
Transform when you turn towards the heart of it.
Worldly and spiritual forms
Come into being through what you think.

Using a mantra and looking at your mind
Are means to polish the mirror of awareness;
Once the obscurations have been removed
They have no more use and can be dropped.

All great and deep spiritual abilities
Are already complete within your mind
And you can roam as you wish
To the Pure Land or Heavenly Palace.

There is no need to seek the Truth
As your mind is from the start already enlightened.
When ripe, all things are fresh and new
When fresh and new, they are inherently already ripe.

Day and night all things are wondrous
And you will have faith in whatever you meet.
The above is what you need to know
Regarding the mind.

Hānshān Déqīng (1546–1623)

POSTCARD # 491: Bangkok: The Buddhist no-self (anatta) is mentioned many times in these posts, which indicates the special place it has in Theravadin Buddhism, but there is also a place for the self or selves; the ‘costumes’ we wear when we speak, discuss, and converse with others. This is of course, how we live our lives, we think of ‘ourself’ as our ‘self,’ and others as the ‘selves’ we may know or those we meet incidentally who just slot into place as individuals we speak with in the course of a day. The way we communicate can be thought of as story-telling… we are all narrators. In conversation we tell others our stories and we listen to the stories told to us by another speaker. Spoken dialogue is usually completely unrehearsed stories that just come tumbling out in a spontaneous leap of words, intuitively arranging themselves as they fall into place. Maybe with a return at the end, to indicate an opening where another speaker can join the conversation.

The television/video screen enters our world with words spoken by professional speakers or actors, along with studio-created images and the whole production is presented as a story supported by enhanced colour and artful lighting. TV News is a more ‘live’ telling of a story about (international) events. The storyline is edited to suit unseen sponsors and others’ requirements. We’re all just seeing ‘the seeing of it’ with stories built upon stories, swirling around events that actually took place. Adverts between programs are stories sliced up into key words and images and Mind puts it together, creates the story of ‘me’ reading all this, me going forward, and ‘me’ as someone just arriving in present time. Who’s that mirrored in the glass wall? This could be a story about me.

In the mind, I believe I am the story and the story is everywhere in my social environment, excerpts of it overheard in the places I visit and the friends I share my time with. We’re always only part the way through whatever story it is before another starts up. Unknowingly we follow up on incomplete stories, searching for an ending – a satisfactory ending. Looking through beginnings, middles and ends of stories that are not satisfactory, but there is no satisfactory ending, in reality… and so, in the mind, we invent endings to make them satisfactory. We tell others stories about ourselves., in so doing, we also tell them to ourselves, assuming there is a self to tell something to, a someone else serving as an audience who is oneself or one’s self.

The Buddhist cognitive sense is the sixth sense, the sense that knows the other five senses and knows itself as the ‘self’ until attachment to that self-aspect is seen through. There is no permanent enduring self, only fleeting selves that arise when thought of, then disappear as soon as they are forgotten.

This post was influenced by a book by David Loy, ‘The World is Made of Stories’

‘No identification can be secure in an impermanent world where all phenomena arise and disappear according to conditions. Liberation occurs when I wake up to the “emptiness” of my true nature. In terms of stories, without realizing the no-thing-ness that transcends all the sedimented roles in “my” stories, I remain stuck in those narratives and their consequences for good and ill.’

POSTCARD # 490: Newcastle Airport: I get a lift to the airport, not far, check in for the flight back to Bangkok, and it’s done… boarding pass and passport in shirt pocket, and they tell me to sit down for a while. Soon after that the wheelchair guy arrives. Jiab convinced me to go on a wheelchair, my problem is balance, if I turn too quickly, I can fall over. There have been a few falls. Hands go out, reflex reaction, in the midst of a fall, and bracing for impact. I broke the little finger of my left hand in a fall, and it never got set properly, it doesn’t go flat, it’s curved. Now I’m walking with a stick that folds away into a plastic case. Don’t need it now, I’m wheeled through the airport security portals and glitzy duty-free sections, straight ahead, the shortest possible route to Departures.

There is something about being in a wheelchair, upright dignity is just gone. I am in a truly passive state, humbled by the generosity of everyone giving way. Exhilarated by zooming into the great perspective of long airport walkways, huge architectural structures move towards me and pass through. Seeing the world from a lower eye level – déjà vu memory of being a child again. It comes with the acceptance of aging, an understanding of what helplessness is, the existential plight; insight into the realization that most of us are held in a trance-like state, pulled into the ‘self’ fiction by the mirror of Western society’s misconstrued fear of the unknown void, emptiness śūnyatā, therefore stuck with the belief in gratification of sensory desires, suffering and the fear of death. Wheelchairs are allowed to go straight through the lines of waiting people and up to the entry to the plane. I’m helped into my seat and the stewardess puts my bag away in overhead luggage space.

The transition takes place from terra firma to blue sky, and fluffy clouds of the heaven realms. Some hours later, we’ve had food and drinks and the lights are turned down so people can sleep. I’m just sitting here with the sound of the plane engines going on and on, a penetrating noise/vibration and the hissing of air. I have to get on good terms with this noise, get used to it, otherwise it could trigger a monstrous headache (but it didn’t).

For a while, I’m able to forget the noise and fall into a partial sleep. A dissatisfactory world of thinking about this and that, pondering over who did what, where and when – a ‘self’ is acting the part of characters portrayed in thoughts, being her and him and us and them and entangled in bits and pieces of related thoughts. The only constant in all this is the hypnotic one-note song I’m singing. So, I have to wake up to see what’s going on… immediately there’s the noise of the engines again. Why do we have it upfront like this? And I try to understand it better.

At first it seems as if there’s a noticeable regular beat in it, like the pacing of a runner, the hissing, whooshing noise suggests speed. But it just goes on and on, there is no ending, no runner arriving at the finish line, no congratulatory roar of cheering and applause… the sound doesn’t ever let up or change. It remains stretched out like that – a prolonged state of going but not arriving. The tedium of it is exhausting. I stand up to flex my knees and visit the toilet. I get inside that small space and close the door, but the noise is in here too! The sound and the hiss are in the centre of my consciousness. I remember now from other flights, everywhere you go inside the aircraft, the noise is the same. Where does it come from?

Anyway, it doesn’t sound like a mechanistic sound, no faults, irregularities, no rising or falling intonation.  How could there be engines that run so totally perfect for twelve hours in a flat continuum of engine noise? This seems strange to me, and a more reasonable explanation comes to mind; the sound and the hiss are being played on a sound track, the intention being to mask the actuality of engine sound and lessen the panic passengers would feel, over the various small changes in the engines’ sound that might happen.

Thus, I find myself situated in the illusion; the engine noise is not real, besides, the plane itself is held on its flight path by automatic pilot… things are done but there is no do-er; ‘no-self,’ (anatta). The aircraft is 6 miles up in thin air, going at 600 mph, like a streak of light across the curvature of the planet. Yet, inside here, passengers are lounging around, looking at videos, playing cards, chatting, having drinks. Impossible to get my head around this, I settle into a meditative state, watching the breath and the sound is now like a warm embrace. The ongoing thinking about things doesn’t bother me… no-self, they’re not ‘my’ thoughts, just random phenomena that arise and fall away.

Otherwise having a silent mind, silent awareness of the present moment, no preferences, simply aware of things as they appear right now. Nothing to say, no opinions about visitors who come in, and stay, or go… let them. No reactions, no responses at all – quietly observing and practicing silent awareness in the present moment with the background of sound masking out all irrelevant things. 

It didn’t take long to start the descent and I forgot to listen for any change in the ‘engine’ sound. Then the ear-popping fall into the lower realms, and bing, bang, bop the plane landed in Bangkok. I had to wait for the passengers to deplane then the Thai wheelchair man was there, a small person with big shoulders. He looked like he was capable of heaving my heavy weight up the inclines and along these long corridors. I needn’t have worried he was pushing me along faster than I‘ve ever done it on foot! In no time at all we had the passport stamped, got the luggage from the belt, out of the exit into the waiting car. I gave the man a good tip. There and back again in 10 days! Like a video on fast-rewind stops at the beginning not the end, the memory of the hassle and stress I suffered when leaving Bangkok was erased.

POSTCARD # 489: Dated 12th September 2022: Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery, Northumberland: I arrived at the monastery in a taxi from Newcastle, after an absence of seven years. First things you see are the stone walls and rundown farm buildings repaired and rebuilt. Grass, hedges, small gardens and trees grown up and all filled out. The monastery looks like it’s nestled into the landscape and everything has made room for it. The guest accommodation is down the hill, two dormitories, male and female and a few individual rooms. I have one of these rooms. There is a Dhamma hall where we sit in meditation, early morning and evening.

My first thoughts about the place were that even though there were these outer transformations, it had hardly changed in the seven years I’d been away – check out an earlier post about this monastery: [‘The thingness of things,’ POSTCARD # 81, dated: July 19th 2014]. I met the senior monk again and he didn’t look a day older. Some of the passageways were repaired and painted but basically it was just the same. It’s as if I’ve been away to the town to get a few things, in the car and coming back only now.

The monks, in brown/faded tangerine colour robes of ancient times, chanting together the historical Pali suttas: Nammo Tassa Bhagavato, Arahato SammasamBuddhassa [Homage to the Blessed] Noble and Perfectly Enlightened One]. Seeing this, and lifted in spirit by the sound of the chanting, I felt well prepared at the end of my UK trip, to step into the Buddha’s Teaching at the start of my return to Thailand.

The bell signals the beginning of a forty-five-minute meditation period. So, I’m getting comfortable on a chair nowadays, because my knees complain if I sit on the floor, and on the chair, the body/mind can get settled into the meditative state. The Theravada practice is not so much about the blissful experience, it’s more to do with the observation and analysis of the mind; the nature of thoughts leading to associated thoughts, headed for some kind of conclusion but never getting there. I’ve learned that this is ‘the doer’ compulsively doing things and we need this ‘doing’ to stop, and make way for ‘being.’ Drop the active driving force and allow the passive form, ‘to be.’

It’s hard to do this, the thinking process is being compulsively driven. You discover that it is after all, the doer, still busy with this and that. It’s possible then, to identify the Self behind it all, and ask that Self to leave the stage. The performance starts to quieten down after that, although the world ‘out there’ is still seen as Self, the doer, the ‘me’ in here, in the realm of ‘doing’, the metaphorical self, ‘I think therefore I am.’  Descartes and his unfortunate self-view – and that’s not the way to go.

Then it all starts to disperse and I’m inside a curious extended freeze-frame moment, vestiges of thoughts dissolve and the whole thing comes to a stop – a sense of immensely distant things and the ‘unthinking’ state arises. The compulsive ‘doer’ is seen in the shadows, but we are not having anything to do with that today, thank you.  Then there is only the space and a curious light illuminates everything.

Incidental thinking episodes float by looking for a place to settle, but there’s nowhere that’s not occupied right now. The spaces between thoughts are being kept empty, those intervals that start and finish before the next thought arises. There’s the awareness of how one thought includes an awareness of another thought; awareness can be in two places at the same time. I contemplate something, and contemplate the mind contemplating that but I can’t go any further with this because the bell rings and we have to get up and put our cushions and things away.
Now it’s later, I’m in my room writing this and it’s uncomfortably cold here, fingertips touch the laptop tentatively, unwilling to make contact with its cold surface. I’m feeling chilled, can’t seem to get warm. There’s this uncertainty, all this moving from place to place, every second day. I came from Thailand only seven days ago, and I’ve been in four places – all over the place. Here in the monastery has been the longest stay, nice people, good conversations in Kusala House, and time to consider how the trip has worked out… it has gone well, I think. Everything is still uncertain, like the weather in UK.  They were saying that things changed the day before yesterday… Summer became Autumn all of a sudden and the nearness to winter is not a pleasing thought for me. Yet I feel a connection with this kind of climate and this monastery, unfortunately, I’ll be away when the snowy weather comes. Thank you everyone, thank you Ajahn. Sorry to leave but looking forward to being back in the land of blue sky and summer all the time, departure on 13 September, 2 days remaining…

“… I went to Ajahn Chah once, totally beside myself with doubt and worry. After we talked awhile, he looked at me and said, ‘If something is uncertain and you want to make it certain, you are going to suffer.’ Well, that’s obvious. But he really knew what he was talking about, he really knew. If it’s uncertain, you’ve got to see it as uncertain – why try and make it certain? It’s only because of our attachment to certainty that we can’t learn from uncertainty; yet it’s only when we’re uncertain that we learn. When we’re uncertain, we can wake up, and look around and say, ‘What’s going on, what’s happening?’ We can be alert and attentive when we’re uncertain; when we’re sure, we just sit back and get fat and lazy. People who are really certain don’t have this sense of openness and vitality and investigation of life, everything’s very closed and sure.” [Ajahn Munindo, Forest Sangha Newsletter, Number 16, April 1991, “In Doubt We Trust.”]

Image by Herman Ettema: Buddha Rupa by the lake at Aruna Ratanagiri Monastery

POSTCARD 488# : Glasgow Queen Street Station: Dated 7th September 2022: Sitting on a bench with hundreds of people going here and there, some sitting like me, but they’re occupied with their phones, while I’m writing notes on pieces of paper, hoping I’ll remember when time comes to key in the gist of what I’m seeing here. Meanwhile, raggedy pigeons walking around my feet looking for scraps, they peck at this and that, maybe trying to give me a hint but I don’t have anything edible to give.

Everywhere there is the picture of a particular place in space and time presented before our eyes, a series of events tell the story, and this is how it happens: a child stumbles into the parameters of my vision, corrects herself, then loses balance again, falls over, and sits up on the floor, slightly shocked by the fall. For a moment I think she’s going to cry, arms held out, wanting to be picked up, but mum is carrying all the luggage and pulling a large case on wheels and there is no dad in the picture. Instead, mum stands there, looking back at her daughter and calls out, in a Scottish dialect, a little harshly, I thought. Daughter remains sitting looking at her options, shouts a one syllable utterance and mother replies with a short encouraging sound but I can’t bear to be in this picture any more.

If you’ve lived in the East for any length of time, or any Third World country, you’ll know that when people have to travel, they go as a family unit, able-bodied grannies, aunties, older sisters, cousins or paid helpers – there would always be someone to pick the child up from the dirty floor. It goes without saying, but here in Northern Europe they have more or less lost that kindness.

For the sake of the economy, the authorities disbanded the clans, ‘every man for himself,’ and we were each reduced to a single unit of consumable human energy, or left to survive by whatever means. (We mustn’t dwell on unhelpful thinking, nor chase after a fleeting happiness, to the extent we forget what we’re doing.) It happened like that because of a misguided belief in Self – there is no enduring Self [anatta]. “The self exists conceptually, dependent on mind and body, not an entity in itself.” [Dalai Lama].

Getting back to reality, I’m waiting for a train to Newcastle via Edinburgh. Meanwhile, situated here in Glasgow Rail Station. There’s a familiarity about this city, although so much has changed. I was at the Glasgow School of Art for four years. The constant sweeping along of things brings me back to the place where I started off from. It was here I had a belief in Self, as we all did, then one day I woke up from the dream but three decades had passed – why didn’t I get here sooner? It’s an adherence that looks more difficult to unstick from than it really is. There is no Self, nobody at home, Elvis has left the building. The concept of no-self can be applied here and now – see the nothingness at the centre of everything. The entire thing is a construct.

We call it a grain of sand,

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect or apt.
The window has a wonderful view of a lake,

but the view doesn’t view itself.

It exists in this world,

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.
The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,

and its shore exists shorelessly.

The water feels itself neither wet nor dry,

and its waves to themselves are neither singular or plural.

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.
And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it, its only reason being

that it blows.”

[Wislawa Szymborska]

POSTCARD 487# : Bangkok, Suvarnabhumi Airport: Dated, Near Midnight, 1st September 2022: We were in the car and nearing the airport when Jiab suddenly realised I had left my jacket in the wardrobe – I never wear it, too hot, in fact it’s been hanging in the wardrobe since the last time I went to Europe seven years ago. But now I needed it, September is usually quite cold in the North of Scotland. No time to go back and get it, what to do? I’ll have to buy one as soon as I get there. So, we reach the airport, bye-bye, and I was off through the endless passageways, security zones and portals that lead to the plane. No worries, still warm in the airport and on the plane, it was a night flight, warm enough with a blanket and a place to put your feet up, not bad, got some sleep, twelve hours later, arrival in Amsterdam was a different story, darkness, got the shivers, every now and then, a huge blast of North Sea air, enormously cold.

Then on the plane to Scotland we were up above the clouds and a brilliant sun in the vastness of blue sky, shining straight on to the right side of head and shoulders (the side where the headache strikes), wonderful to feel that warming, and felt a sunbeam warming all the way through to the ear drum itself. How strange, but I recall this happening previously in Scotland – the sun must be shining from a different angle in this part of the world, than how it is in Thailand.

At the airport my cousin was waiting in arrivals and he swiftly took me away to a discount shop where I got a light-weight jacket with a zip and a hood. Just right for September weather. So, we couldn’t believe it was seven years since I last visited Scotland (also our own ageing, that face that looks at you in the mirror) and later with my sister the thought of it being seven years was just ‘too much’ and we preferred to see it as a time somewhere out there in the past. Then I met her daughter again and two grandchildren who had grown so much, they were visible proof of that span of time.

How to understand the concept of time? There is the ‘now,’ a point in time. The present moment as it was then, when I was last here, is the same present moment I experience today, seven years later in linear time. Therefore, you could say that chunk of time is one long stretched-out present moment. And, on the larger scale of things, the Whole History of the World is just one entire present moment… beyond comprehension, wow! Cannot be thought of in terms of Self, better to think of it as no-self (anatta), and emptiness (sunyata). But so much has been said in this blog about no-self. My cousin who is a Church-goer visibly flinched when I first brought it up in conversation. I need to pay more attention to what this means and how it is best expressed.

But maybe there is no best way of expressing or explaining no-self. Just let them get on with it and not have to think about the whole picture as it is. Meister Eckhart in the 14th Century paid a heavy price when he expressed some radical ideas in the context of the Christian belief at that time. There were two distinct factions; the Cataphatic division (Franciscan) whose spirituality was entirely devotional, and the Apophatic division (Dominican), which included Eckhart, whose spirituality was almost entirely analytical. In a few words we can say Eckhart wanted there to be a complete rejection of everything learned and cherished in a person, until there was only the empty ‘soul’, then Christ should be ‘born’ in us spiritually. From a Buddhist point of view, this resembles some aspects of the Theravada practice, which culminates in emptiness (sunyata) and no-self (anatta). Of course, there is no Jesus and no soul in the Theravadin Buddhism. Rather we allow the emptiness to be as it is, without any Christian intervention.

Needless to say, there was outright disagreement from the Devotional division, who were the Franciscans (Eckhart was Dominican). The Pope and other Church authorities created a huge upheaval concerning Eckhart’s sermons and teachings, calling him a heretic.

I spent some time with my cousin’s Church group (Devotional) and in the past, I’ve dropped into their discussions and surprised to see their reaction to the concept of no-self (anatta), I shall not bring it up again.

Returning to my journey, I left for Glasgow on the 6th September to see a friend you may know from the blog, Manish Jain, who is a follower of Ishwar Puri Ji and I’d like to write more in the blog in the near future, about the devotional aspect of Ishwar Ji’s teaching. I spent one night there and, on the 7th, left Glasgow for Edinburgh and Newcastle and through to Hartridge Buddhist monastery. By the end of this trip, I’ll have experienced both the analytical and devotional aspects of spirituality.

“When the sensation that I am in control of my life and must make it happen ends, then life is simply lived and relaxation takes place. There is a sense of ease with whatever is the case and an end to grasping for what might be.” [Richard Sylvester]

POSTCARD # 486: Bangkok: There’s really nothing left to do, just waiting for the hours to pass before it’s getting-on-the-plane time – everything else seems kinda irrelevant. If you’re reading this on the day of publication, 02.09.22, I’ll be gone… hop, skip, jump, up and over to Northern Europe, where it’s around seven in the morning, local time, I’m still in Airplane Mode, but near to where I get off the bus. A significant moment in my childhood in Scotland; the bus would stop in the middle of nowhere and my mother, my sister and I would step down with all our bags, to the quiet of the countryside, watch the bus go rumbling off and it was the start of the summer holidays spent in my grandfather’s farm. A happy time, and I like to think of this trip back ‘home’ in the same way, remembering how it was in those childhood days.
We re-live our childhood through our children and although I never had any of my own, there was M our Thai niece. Some readers will know about M through reading the early posts – the first time she makes an appearance is in a post titled: “No more than this,” dated: May 10, 2013. I think she must have been 7 at that time and even then, there was a ‘conversational’ style about her English, skipping over vocabulary items she couldn’t reach with that spontaneity that seeks/finds creative solutions to problems in the here-and-now, and moving on.

The last time M appears in the blog is in a post titled ‘2021 looking forward,’ when she was 16 and had dyed her hair a yellow-blond colour. By this time, she was racing ahead in her ‘free-flow’ English style, disregarding errors. It was a direct result of the daily confrontation with English-speaking kids when she went to New Zealand for a few months on an exchange student program – liked it so much she went back a second year.

After NZ, she went to international school in Chiang Mai for a year, then she came to stay with us in Bangkok, just as the Covid lock-down happened and there was nothing to do, other than take on-line classes, and work on her GED and SAT scores. She’s on a ‘Gap’ year now, studying Japanese and planning to go to Waseda University, Japan next year. Maybe she has an affinity with the Japanese language because her grandfather was Japanese.

Nowadays, she is completely fluent in English and chooses to spend her time with my wife Jiab, who speaks English well. It amazes me that even though they are both Thai, their conversation is in English all the time. She speaks Thai with her mother (Jiab’s younger sister) and other members of the family, but she’s out there on her own in the English speaking world – not necessarily native English speakers but those in the South East Asia region who use English as a link-language.

Mostly she is quietly being her own self and surprisingly communicative at times – other times the earphones cable disappears in curtains of hair – sorry, she’s not available at the moment, plugged into two phones, watching YouTube videos while checking for messages at the same time… our questions addressed to her remain unanswered. She is becoming a person, a lengthy process. The whole thing dependent on the time needed to grow, of course – sometimes sleeps til noon then phones a food delivery from her room and appears downstairs to get it from the motorbike guy, goes back to her room to eat it there. Some of us might think this is a bit, well, antisocial? But here, nobody gets upset, it’s included in the Thai way, let it go…

I’ve included part of a post here ‘A kind of subjectivity’ March 30, 2014, that highlights M as an eight-year-old:

…being the only foreigner in the family, I’ve learned to go along with the preferences of others when it comes to food. As it was this morning, for example, faced with Korean kimchi at 10.30 AM because somebody thought it was a good idea to go to the Korean food buffet downtown, and if it were up to me, I’d have chosen something less exotic so early in the day, but Jiab thinks M, needs to eat something substantial so maybe she’ll like this. Okay go for it.  

We get there, M tries the kimchi and tells me: not spicy, Toong-Ting, her name for me (key in Toong-Ting in the Search Box for all the M posts). She’s waiting for a response… I taste it, blood red and trailing strands of human skin and tissue –  a vampire thing? But there’s nothing wrong with kimchi really, I’ve had things far more out-of-this-world than that. I nod with approval and give her a smile I think is convincing. But M can see kimchi doesn’t quite hit the spot.
She comes over and tells me quietly they have ice-cream here. I’m thinking, yeh… well, do I need ice-cream? But if I said I didn’t want ice cream, I’d lose all credibility; so, I say, Nice! I’ll have chocolate chip. M goes off to tell the waitress, who comes with the ice creams… 30 years further on in the journey and I’m eating ice-cream with a nine-year-old.

I’m amazed that she seems to like me and her English language is as it is, without any corrections from me or being told she got it wrong. The kind of thing Western people remember in their own childhood and may suffer from. Maybe M responds to this quality of improvised simplicity I’ve developed partly because I want to avoid the systems of thought I grew up with, besides M thinks differently from kids her age in the UK.

It’s fun to have M in the world with all her made-up statements and short-cut questions. Besides, she corrects my Thai pronunciation (the tones), has a continuous chattering bird-like dialogue with me and discovers useful-to-know things about my phone I never knew were there. M has a kind of subjectivity she shares with me, she is an empath – no words for it, maybe because she’s a child in a bilingual situation and has to find the easiest route to understanding what I’m saying, and composing what she’s going to say in her head, or maybe all children are like this to an extent, and because I never had any children of my own, it seems special to me.

Being part of her world means there’s less of me holding on to my Western ‘self.’ I am the odd-man-out here in Thailand, a largely Buddhist population and unique in Asia, in that it was never colonized by a Western power. I learned early on, the importance of listening to the local people. It’s not appropriate to be imposing my Western ‘standards’ here, creating supporting statements to prove what I’ve already decided is the correct way of going about things, and convinced about this simply because my continuing engagement with it somehow seems to confirm it has objective reality. In the East, the starting point and the answer are revealed in the interaction with the context of the question – inductive reasoning, it takes longer, it’s more revelatory, exploratory, open-ended.

It reminds me of M’s intuitive way of figuring things out, there is no structure to hold things together if it all falls apart – but all nine year-olds must have this inductive way of expressing their reflection on ‘the world,’ more so for bi-lingual kids who have to invent a bridge from one set of behaviours to another – it’s all part of the game.

To close, I’ve included part of another post at the end of one of our Bangkok/Chiang Mai flights titled: ‘Windows,’ and dated: March 14, 2014. We come in from the airport in a taxi to the Nontaburi house, put the key in the door and get inside. Nobody at home, M runs around discovering the familiarity of the last time we were here… her energy is noticeable and my attempts to keep up with it:

We’re in a corner of the room where she has her playthings scattered around. Everything lying in disarray after a particularly large creative frenzy of cutting out and the sticking of things with glue, scotch tape, adhesive coloured paper and bits of old Christmas decorations, recycled. And when every additional use these items might be put to is thoroughly exhausted, M moves to Minecraft videos on my iPad: “Look Toong-Ting, look…” she says.

I position myself so I can see the screen, participate when I’m needed, and otherwise pleasantly distracted by the surroundings; the world suddenly thrust into a clear, enhanced three-dimensional presence. Objects become somehow… known? All our bags and things just lying where they got dropped, extensions and extrapolations of the environment of rooms, the furniture, the plants and trees outside. A momentary happiness, bien-être, no words for it…